Liam Fay: Why does no one dare say Coughlan is out of her depth?

Famously foul-mouthed in private, the tanaiste is struggling to remain sweet-tongued as she flounders as minister for enterprise, trade and employment

Famously foul-mouthed in private, Mary Coughlan is clearly struggling with the job of being sweet-tongued in public. The resulting inner tension may partly explain the garbled blather that emerges when the tanaiste makes one of her increasingly strange TV appearances.

Central to the indigestible waffle that has become her trademark is the relentless use of drab platitudes and leaden jargon. It's almost as if she resorts to these meaningless mantras to evade the more colourfully expressive words that apparently spring naturally to her lips. Making reassuring sounds rather than coherent sense appears to be her priority.

It doesn't help that her grasp of detail is atrocious. When Joan Burton took the government to task on the public finances in the Dail last week, the Labour deputy reminded Coughlan that she had been unable to discuss exchequer figures the previous day "because you were so unknowledgeable about the state of the